by Stan4Nats
by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears
by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears
As we move past Thanksgiving, most teams have not added new acquisitions to their MLB roster, and the Washington Nationals are one of them. There is a lot of work to get done to get to a Spring Training roster, and general manager Mike Rizzo has less than 80-days to get there. We wait for any news that can move the Nats up from the 68.4 wins that FanGraphs is projecting today with that ghastly 22.3 WAR number.
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Baseball usually goes into a Thanksgiving hibernation as it gears up for the Winter Meetings late next week in Nashville, Tennessee. But never be surprised if a signing or trade happens. Rumors broke over Thanksgiving last year that Jeimer Candelario was headed to the Washington Nationals. Not every deal gets dragged out. What might be big for consumers and their Black Friday shopping obsessions — does not necessarily translate to baseball. The Winter Meetings is about as close as you can come to Black Friday frenzy — without the bargain sale prices.
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There have been plenty of online comments, including by MLB players on their favorite baseball movie. But what about songs?
Here is just one of the many online articles about the best baseball songs.
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The Washington Nationals came into the off-season with nine arbitration-eligible players — and with a few signings, and a a couple of DFA’s, the team is in a position today to move forward with all of their four remaining players who are arb-eligible and will receive tender offers, if they do not agree to firm salaries before that, for the 2024 season.
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The Washington Nationals selected four Rule-5 eligible pitchers for the Nats 40-man roster with DJ Herz being an obvious move along with Mitchell Parker who emerged this week as a near-lock. General Manager Mike Rizzo also added RH reliever Zach Brzykcy who is rehabbing from a UCL surgery as well as RHP Cole Henry who is working his way back from thoracic outlet syndrome surgery.
While all four names were debated over the past few weeks, the biggest surprise per a source is that the Nats could not come to terms with Dominic Smith, and he was DFA’d much like Luke Voit was a year ago. Smith was arbitration-eligible and might have earned about $4.3 million if he took this to an arbitration hearing. Much like Voit last year, Rizzo was not going to chance it and per a source tried to negotiate a deal under $3 million, which obviously did not happen. Also, RHP Cory Abbott was DFA’d, and Andres Machado requested Unconditional Release Waivers to pursue an opportunity in Japan.
Shortly afterward all of the aforementioned roster moves, the Nats also announced that arb-eligible outfielder Victor Robles and reliever Tanner Rainey both came to terms on one-year deals. That gives the team cost certainty with both. It doesn’t guarantee that Robles isn’t traded, but this probably also means he won’t be a DFA. We are waiting on dollar figures for both. Sources told us that if Robles did not come to a contract resolution, he would have met the same fate as Smith.
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Tomorrow is “Rule 5 day” to add any eligible players, that a team wants to protect, to their 40-man roster, and Friday is the non-tender deadline. For the Washington Nationals, they should have a clear path to the Rule 5, and the tougher decisions are on the non-tender deadline.
The Nats have over three dozen players eligible as Rule 5 players. There is former first round pick Mason Denaburg on the list, as well as the newly acquired DJ Herz and Kevin Made who were acquired in the Jeimer Candelario trade. There are also Mitchell Parker and the once highly touted Cole Henry who is a year removed from thoracic outlet surgery.
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We are repeating the initiative we started in 2021 (Donate Your Unused Red Carpet Rewards Points to the Nationals Youth Academy) and repeated in 2022 (The Kids Do Love It – Donate Your Unused RCR Points), collecting items from the RCR program to donate to the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy that supports scholar athletes from under-served communities.
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The Washington Nationals announced their 2024 Major League coaching staff today, and the biggest surprise was the coaches who were retained. Both pitching coach Jim Hickey, and hitting coach Darnell Coles had their contracts extended after the Nats posted a 5.02 team ERA placing them only in front of the Rockies in the NL, and the team was last in offensive home runs in the NL. While some optimists could look at areas where the team was good in pitching and hitting, and use a team in a rebuild as an excuse for the deficiencies — then why were other coaches not retained? In actuality, there needed to be changes in the coaching staff, and maybe there were reasons to keep Hickey and Coles. The addition of Miguel Cairo at bench coach is a move that will add a wealth of experience to the coaching staff from both the development and coaching side.
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The GM meetings started on Tuesday and were supposed to have concluded today in Scottsdale, Arizona, until a bad case of stomach flu hit dozens of attendees. At first they thought it might have been food poisoning — but once it was determined to be a virus, MLB shut it down on Wednesday. Today’s schedule is really for the benefit of registered MLBPA agents, and their meetings will be conducted on ZOOM calls.
Yesterday, in the early afternoon in Scottsdale, Nats’ GM Mike Rizzo spoke in MLB Network and then to the assembled media in two separate sessions. There was really nothing new from Rizzo, rather he just reiterated what he has been saying since the end of the season that he will be working on acquiring starting pitching, bullpen help, and a middle of the order power bat.
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Didn’t the 1971 Washington Senators just win the World Series? To see two of baseball’s Top-7 overall prospects donning Senators jerseys has to bring back some visions of grandeur. The 2024 Washington Nationals will almost certainly be tapping in on the two top outfield prospects, Dylan Crews (No. 4) and James Wood (No. 7), in the upcoming season — and maybe one of them makes the Opening Day roster.
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"Opening Day should be a National holiday"
